Automotive Applications
LS-DYNA has been used in the automotive industry for over 25 years, and its adoption continues to grow. Today, LS-DYNA is the primary crash analysis tool for over 80% of the world’s major automotive OEMs, and the code is used by an estimated 90% of tier 1 suppliers.
The phrase “design-build-test” has been used to accurately describe the traditional automotive development cycle. In recent years, however, the industry has set a new goal of 1-year from concept to reality. With such an aggressive target in mind, design-build-test approach has become increasingly impractical.
LSTC provides a solution to this problem with LS-DYNA, which can be used to replace a significant portion of physical testing with virtual testing. The bottom line is that firms can minimize rebuilding and retesting and ultimately save on development time and cost.
LS-DYNA is already being used for a wide variety of automotive-related simulations. Some of the most common analysis types include:
- FMVSS201 Head Impact
- FMVSS207/210 Seatbelt Anchorage
- FMVSS208 Frontal Impact
- FMVSS214 Static & Dynamic Side Impact
- FMVSS216 Roof Crush
- FMVSS225 Child Restraint Anchorage
- FMVSS301 Rear Impact & Fuel Integrity
- IIHS Offset Frontal Impact
- IIHS Side Impact
- IIHS Low Speed Bumper Impact
- Gravity Loading
- Elastic Recovery After Dynamic Impact
Such analyses encompass a wide variety of complex physical phenomena, and LS-DYNA is equipped with vast array of features and capabilities to replicate these events. These include:
- An extensive library of materials (more than any other code) capable of accurately modeling steel, aluminum, plastics, fabric, glass, rubber, foam, honeycomb, and many others under both static and high-speed dynamic conditions. Many of these material models also capture viscous, rate-dependent, and hyperelastic behavior, and there is a wide variety of both brittle and ductile failure options available.
- An extensive selection of accurate and very general contact algorithms. These include surface-to-surface contacts, eroding contacts, tied interfaces, and many more.
- An extensive selection of airbag modeling tools. Available methods include Control Volume, ALE, and CPM.
- An extensive selection of seat belt related features, including sliprings, retractors, pre-tensioners, and sensors.
- An extensive selection of joining methods. These include rigid connections, bolts, and spotwelds. Delamination of boded structures can also be modeled.
- Multi-physics capabilities to model things like fluid-structure interaction in fuel tanks.
LSTC has also invested tremendous effort in developing a large collection of dummy and barrier models for use in crash simulations. These models have been correlated with physical test results and are completely free when you purchase LS-DYNA.
Another strength of LS-DYNA that is critical to the automotive industry is the scalability of the MPP version of the code. With the ability utilize hundreds (or even thousands) of CPUs for a single simulation run, detailed crash analyses that once took days can now be easily turned around in a matter of hours.